Touch display screens are categorized into a self-capacitive touch display screen and a mutual-capacitive touch display screen dependent upon their touch principles. Typically in the existing mutual-capacitive touch display screen, mutual capacitors are formed between touch reference electrodes and touch sensing electrodes, and a touch point is detected by measuring variations of the amounts of charges in the mutual capacitors while the touch display screen is being touched. In the driving architecture of the mutual-capacitive touch display screen described above, a shifting circuit needs to be designed to provide the touch reference electrodes with a touch detection signal. Here the shifting module includes a plurality of levels of shifting units, where each level of shifting unit corresponds to one of the touch reference electrodes, and each level of shifting unit shifts a signal outputted by a preceding level of shifting unit and then outputs a shifted signal. Within the width of a signal pulse outputted by the shift unit, the corresponding touch reference electrode receives the touch detection signal.
The above driving architecture needs a complex shift circuit to successively drive touch electrodes. The shift circuit is usually designed independent of the driving circuit, generally provided on a display panel, and has a relatively complex structure, it needs to occupy a larger panel space. Moreover, the shift circuit can only scan the touch electrodes in a specified sequence, the sequence of scanning the touch electrodes can therefore hardly be changed, resulting in a relatively poor flexibility in controlling.